My question involves divorce attorney malpractice in the state of: California
I'm have a problem with a former divorce attorney, which I had 2 years ago that filed a motion to reduce support 75 days (!!!) too late. Needless to say, I fired him over this. I have done this filing myself, and it takes a maximum of 2 days to get this done, very trivial indeed.
I'm now wondering what I can do to recuperate the 4400 dollars that this error on his side cost me in extra support payments that I had to do due to the error.
I have been in negotiation with him, but these have stalled so far, hints that I might sue have not improved negotiations. Now I need to sue to get this moving and am considering a small claims suit.
I do have all the evidence, all the communication, the endless delays on his side in writing, I could already see back then that it is best to do a lot of things in writing, so that you can actually prove what happened when.
Now I have a problem for the statute of limitations. The one for malpractice has expired already (one year), and I don’t know if there is any way that I can still recuperate my damages. He pointed out that we could (or must) do fee arbitration, but I don’t want to do that, as it seems tilt the playing field for his advantage. I don’t have a clause in the contract that binds me to do fee arbitration, so I don’t think I have to. Also, I don’t think this is a fee dispute, as he just plain simple screwed up and violated the standard of care that can be expected by a professional attorney.
I’m a very reasonable person and am just looking to minimize my damages, I’m not out to purposefully damage this attorney or hound him.
What options do I have at this point? Is arbitration maybe something that might work? Is doing a complaint at the bar association useful? What is the statute of limitations on doing a small claims?
I figure that I might only have to file the small claims, that he will be willing to negotiate again, because the small claims will cost him a lot of time.

